


eden

by water_poet



Category: Hazbin Hotel (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Historical, Blood and Gore, Canon Dialogue, Champagne, Dancing, F/M, Love at First Sight, Manipulation, Party, Past Lives, Rituals, Serial Killers, Soul Selling, Unhealthy Relationships, Weddings, everyone is morally grey, they love each other but it's not totally normal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:15:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22412374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/water_poet/pseuds/water_poet
Summary: Charlie has no memory of her past life.Alastor, on the other hand, does.
Relationships: Alastor/Charlie Magne
Comments: 8
Kudos: 159





	eden

**Author's Note:**

> AU where Charlie and Alastor knew each other before death.
> 
> In this AU Lucifer and Lilith adopted Charlie but she has no memory of her past life.

The August air is thick with fireflies as the hansom pulls up to the mansion. Evaporated dew hangs in the night, heavy as it presses into Charlotte's skin.  
  
"Oh, my, it's dreadful out here" her mother moans. She snaps her colorful silk can back and forth but her hair doesn't budge from the greying blonde coif it's been piled into, save a few wispy tendrils hanging around her face like cobwebs.  
  
Music floats into the courtyard from the open windows to the ballroom, silken curtains waving gently in the hot breeze.  
  
Charlie bites her lip and there's copper on her tongue.  
  
The ballroom is white and glowing, all polished wooden floors and gilded ceilings. A crystal chandelier dangles over the guests, reflecting speckles of gold and silver down on the swirling skirts and dark suits.  
  
"Ah, welcome, my dear! You must be Lady Samantha!" comes the voice, sharp and rich and Charlie's eyes drop instantly as the host shakes her mother's hand enthusiastically. "A pleasure to be meeting you! Your husband's research assistance on my recent project was invaluable, simply invaluable!"  
  
He pauses, and Charlie's face is hot. "And who might this be?"  
  
"My daughter, Charlotte" her mother says absently. "Oh, Jessibelle is here! We must say hello"  
  
She glides away, not bothering after Charlie. She supposes "we" is rather subjective when it comes to her mother.  
  
"Welcome, sweetheart" the host says, and his voice is soft and low now, like the water lapping at the bank of the creek. Charlie looks up. He's tall and thin, with sharp eyes and facial features. His black hair puffs up in large but well-styles coifs on his head. She can see her own reflection, bright red in the lenses of his spectacles.  
  
He takes her hand and kisses it. "Alastor. I'm afraid your mother already gave away your name"  
  
"You can call me Charlie" she says, and curses herself. Her voice is high and thin and she sounds for all the world like a child with schoolgirl crush.  
  
"Charlie, then. Would you care to dance?" Alastor asks, offering a slim hand to her.  
  
He's almost angelic in the pale lights of the ballroom and he's looking at her like she's special so she slips her small hand into his and he leads her towards the dance floor.  
  
"I'm not one to make assumptions, my dear, but it seems you are uneasy. Is everything alright?" Alastor asks. He places his hand on the small of her back and she bites her tongue to stifle the way her breath catches in her throat.  
  
"Of course. I just don't go to parties very often. It's all quite new for me" she says. It's half true, but Charlie can't lie and the half-truth is better than nothing.  
  
The music strikes up and Alastor pulls her close as the dance begins. His pale skin flashes with shades of gold over his cheeks.  
  
"Forgive me my boldness, Charlie, but might I say you look beautiful this evening? I'm flattered to have such a divine presence here at my humble celebration" Alastor say, his voice swooping low between the high, thin notes of the violin.  
  
It's all flattery she's heard before but with Alastor it's more than that. He spins her about and she's dizzy and drunk on him. He's a force of nature and he sets her heart thudding like a drum.  
  
When the song is over, he brushes his lips against her knuckles and disappears into the crowd. Charlie watches, helpless.  
  
Early that morning as the carriage departs, she finds a letter scented like cinnamon on the seat cushion.  
  
 _My darling Charlie,_  
  
 _Would you consider visiting sometime this week? I should love to show you around the garden._  
  
 _Yours,_  
  
 _Alastor Deirson_  
  
Charlie folds the note and holds it to her chest, her heart pounding against the paper.  
  


* * *

  
A week turns into a month which turns into a spring wedding as the petals scatter about the damp ground.  
  
Alastor toasts to their vows, sickness and health, richer and poorer, until death did they part.  
  
"And even after that, my dear" he says with a wink and she wonders how she fell for a flatterer like him but he whisks her on to the dance floor like he had all those evenings ago and she remembers.  
  
The neighbors at the party whisper but Charlie doesn't care. She tries not to care what other people say. Alastor makes a hobby of it.  
  
"I love you" she says.  
  
"And I, you" Alastor responds. He kisses her like he means it and she's certain he does, in his own strange way. Then again, maybe she wouldn't want to be loved any other way.  
  


* * *

  
Charlie decides life with Alastor must be like the life Adam and Eve once lived in the garden.  
  
In the mornings, their bedroom smells like roses as the remains of night air drift through the lace curtains. The radio rattles out the latest and Alastor pulls her into a dance in the dining room as the maid brings in their coffee.  
  
He presses kisses to her cheek, her nose, her mouth, fills her head with breathy darlings and dearests. They spend their afternoons in the garden and he picks flowers to add to her hair.  
  
It's perfect.  
  
And yet in Eden there was the Tree and Alastor has secrets. Some nights she wakes and he is not there beside her. The hollow in the bed is cold and she tries not to be afraid. But he is never gone in the morning, so she is never truly afraid.  
  
His friends that drop by some evenings to drink and smoke make her pause when she hears their laughter, low and cruel, but Alastor never seems to truly enjoy his time with them and Charlie knows her own father has his unsavory associates.  
  
But she's always been curious.  
  
"Where do you run off to at night, Al?" she asks.  
  
For the briefest of moments, Alastor's eyes dart away as he finishes his tea. The afternoon sun is streaking through the gazebo and on to the linen tablecloth.  
  
"Sometimes I like to walk about the grounds. Clean air does a body good, that's what they're saying" he says. "Does it bother you, darling?"  
  
Charlie isn't sure what the truth is.  
  
"Of course not" she says. "I was just curious"  
  
(She doesn't ask about his friends.)  
  
Two weeks pass without an incident and she tells herself she's done with questions. Alastor takes her for strolls about the town, smiling at the way she admires the local shops. He hums softly to her as she falls asleep, old tunes about loving and losing and finding things. He is everything he should be, and more.  
  
And yet the curiosity lingers in her stomach, eating her alive.  
  
She fakes a dizzy spell during a luncheon with the local women and is whisked home. Alastor calls off work and is by her before the doctor is, holding her hands in his.  
  
The curiosity is almost consumed by guilt as he looks at her with amber eyes, patient and worried and kind.  
  
She sleeps through the day and as night falls she lies awake, listening to his breathing. Outside, the stars begin to appear, blinking gently into view.  
  
At midnight, Alastor stirs.  
  
Charlie doesn't move.  
  
He stands, and she can hear him slipping on his coat and his shoes. The soles creak on the floor and she snaps her eyes shut, darting back and forth frantically behind her eyelids.  
  
He kisses her cheek and brushes a strand of hair away from her face.  
  
Then he is gone.  
  
Charlie waits, listening to the old house settling. In the distance, a floor below, she hears the door lock. The echo of the key bounces about in her mind for a moment before she opens her eyes.  
  
The summer night is warm against her skin, like it was when they first met. In spite of this, Charlie feels a shiver run down her spine. She pulls her slip tighter around her shoulders.  
  
There's no way to tell where Alastor had gone. She curses herself, feeling foolish. He's in the garden, or out by the pond having a smoke. She's childish even now, and she turns to go back to bed.  
  
Then she hears it.  
  
No one else would have. But Charlie's grown so used to the sound of his voice that she recognizes it instantly, floating through the night like a summer breeze. An old tune, about loving and losing.  
  
It's coming from the old greenhouse.  
  
 _"Why don't we use it? Maybe spruce it up a bit?"_  
  
 _Alastor purses his lips. "It came with the land. I suppose I've always preferred the out-of-doors sort of gardening. Not to mention it's horribly rundown. Left over from the plantation days, no doubt" he explains, coming to stand behind Charlie in the window. "But perhaps you'd prefer a new one, all to yourself?"_  
  
She couldn't blame him for wanting a new one. The windows of the old greenhouse were so thick with grime and dust that it was impossible to see in or out. Even if they hadn't been, the tangled covering of vines and creepers would have obstructed most of the view.  
  
Charlie holds her breath as she approaches. There's something off about the scent of the fertilizer. Perhaps the rats had gotten into it.  
  
Alastor's song switches to something bouncier about starlight on a street. Charlie bends down to peer through the dilapidated keyhole.  
  
Three things happen.  
  
First, Charlie shrieks.  
  
Second, Alastor falls silent and turns towards the door.  
  
And third, Charlie sees what her husband's been hiding.  
  
The scent hits her quickly, in that brief moment before it all blurs into nothing. Iron and fish and rotten meat like the cheap cuts at the butchers. It invades her senses, making her eyes water and her nose burn.  
  
Then there are the bodies, illuminated by the dull light of an old lantern. Lying on a greenhouse table, next to a chipped pot, is a man's body, mangled and twisted. There are sigils carved into his flesh, a language Charlie does not know and hopes to never learn. His skin is still pink, as if his death was very recent. On the rotten wooden bench on the other side is half a torso, more strange carving etched on its skin. It looks almost old, and coated with a layer of soil.  
  
Charlie recalls Arnold Gestynn's funeral the week prior and her stomach turns.  
  
And finally, there's Alastor. Sleeves rolled up to his elbows, glasses perched at the end of his thin nose like he's at his desk, poring over some new novel. Blood stains his body, streaked across his neck and face. There are darker splotches on his white overcoat, along with various other patches of discoloration. A long, thin blade glints in his hand, dotted with crimson flecks. But the worst is his smile, wide and deranged and gleeful at what's been done. It doesn't look like her husband, her Al.  
  
That's when Charlie screams.  
  
She doesn't know where to go, or how. She only goes to run, dressing slippers sinking into the damp soil as she tries to get away.  
  
"Darling! Wait! Please!" he calls, and he's almost _amused_ and it makes her skin crawl.  
  
And yet, he is sincere. He always is.  
  
So Charlie stops.  
  


* * *

  
Truth be told, she doesn't hear most of his explanations. There is something about a deal and a sacrifice and power but her whole chest is numb to it now. She feels naïve. She feels foolish. But the anger does not follow. The fear does not creep into her bones. The resentment never comes.  
  
"Darling, I'm doing this for us" Alastor says, kneeling and offering his hand. "I love you, and I swore I would protect you until death parted us, and even afterwards. I am a man of my word. Please, you must believe me"  
  
Charlie thinks back to the night of the ball and the way her chest was warm and her heart was light when she thought of him. She thinks of the moonlight on the pond when he proposed and the clash of brass at their wedding. She think of the morning sunrise and the afternoon walks and the way he kissed her before he left.  
  
She kisses him again, tears falling down her face. They drop onto Alastor's cheeks, mixing with the blood.  
  
"I'm going back to bed. I'll see you in the morning" she says softly, voice hesitant.  
  
She leaves him there, on his knees in the back fields. She tosses her slippers into the fireplace as she passes, not looking back as she hears the fire consume them.  
  
Somehow, sleep comes easy.  
  
And in the morning, Alastor is there, newspaper in hand as he sits at the dining table. He looks up, and for the tiniest of moments he is afraid, like a deer in the headlights.  
  
Charlie doesn't mind. It feels good to be powerful.  
  
But she loves him all the same, even if she shouldn't, so she surges forward, intertwining her fingers with his while he murmurs sweet names into her hair.  
  
"Oh, dearest" he says, and she thinks for a moment he is going to cry. But he stays smiling, stays calm.  
  
So Charlie pulls on her nicest dress and they go to the neighbor's birthday dinner and she clings to Alastor's arm the whole time. He doesn't seem to mind, but she can feel his heartbeat pounding angrily. She's watching him. She's keeping everyone safe. She's protecting him.  
  
"Oh, yes, we adore our little monsters" Anna Marie chirps. "Lacy, our maid, is just - yes, please, another glass - ah, she's simply stupendous, I'll have to send you the number of her agency when - "  
  
Anna Marie has always talked to much. Charlie knows this. She brings up rude subjects under the guise of harmless chatter and it always makes Charlie red in the face. The last time Anna Marie had brought up the subject of children, Alastor had curtly dismissed the topic, pulling Charlie away to the porch where they had laughed.  
  
Now, Charlie's stomach just sinks. Anna Marie's friends giggle tipsily and shush her, twittering like a cluster of songbirds. Alastor laughs in his charming way and they escape, out to the garden where the butler, who has taken his smoke break, quickly retreats back into the house with a sharp gesture from Alastor.  
  
"Charlie, my love, I - "  
  
"How long, Alastor?" she asks, her voice deathly calm.  
  
She doesn't need to explain. He understands.  
  
"Since before we met. Since I made the deal" he says, and a traitorous part of Charlie is almost relieved.  
  
"When does it end?" she asks.  
  
"When he says" Alastor admits.  
  
The never hangs in the air like the hot summer fog, unsaid. Charlie wonders what else he has left unsaid all these years, how many half-truths he's fed her.  
  
She doesn't ask. She doesn't want to know.  
  
A week later, she lies to the police about Alastor's whereabouts and someone else is accused of Ted Douglas' murder. The man dies and there is nothing to be done without the truth.  
  
Charlie lies awake at night, not bothering to respond when Alastor leaves every few weeks and returns hours later. He doesn't rejoin her in bed. He sits by the fire embers and reads until the sun rises.  
  
Try as she might, she still loves him. Some nights she dreams of his hands on her, blood trailing across her body and over her skin in gentle patterns. His teeth flash and the radio rattles in the background. She wakes in cold sweats, breathing hard.  
  
Alastor hold her as she falls back asleep. This time, she dreams of summer evenings and cold, rich champagne.  
  


* * *

  
Alastor is killed in a gunfight with the brother of a victim two weeks later. Charlie finds him on the lawn, arms sprawled out to the sides like he's nailed to a cross, a dark pool of red growing like an oil slick across his white shirt.  
  
He's buried and she remains innocent under the law.  
  
It's winter when she finds the books, locked in his desk drawer. The pages are curled and yellowed with age, notes scrawled across the margins in Alastor's looping font in a language she can't read.  
  
Charlie looks at the words for a long moment. They blur together in her mind, the lines of ink twisting and contorting into something strange and forbidden.  
  
She can understand them.  
  
The book burns against her palms but she collects the rest and brings them to the bedroom. They don't weigh much, but there's a hollow heaviness in her heart as she sets them down.  
  
She refuses to open them again for a long while. The snow melts and the flowers begin to bloom and people have stopped whispering about her dead husband.  
  
The books stay on the shelf.  
  
"M'am, if I may, you've been inside for so long. I think perhaps you ought to try and enjoy the nice weather" her maid says.  
  
Even death can't make Charlie cold so she smiled and takes her tea out to the gazebo. The vines have started to bite into the pillars, but she doesn't really care.  
  
The bees buzz about, bumping into flowers, still sleepy from their long nap. Charlie watches idly as a spider crawls along the gazebo lattice. She's always rather liked spiders. Alastor had not. It was always so strange, seeing someone like him put off by something as small as a spider.  
  
"I hope there's lots of nice not-creepy-crawly things where he's gone" Charlie admits to the spider.  
  
If it could have, she's certain it would have laughed.  
  


* * *

  
The books tell her a lot. Too much. The curiosity is all consuming. She wants to know what's happened to Alastor. She wants to know where he is. She wants to be there.  
  
The night of the full moon, she puts her nicest dress. She does her makeup in delicate layers, smudged grey and silver. She drags a full bottle of champagne out to the greenhouse and toasts to summer nights and weddings, to Eden, and to Adam for getting himself kicked out.  
  
The servants find the salt and the candles and the charred remains of a book when the sun rises.  
  


* * *

  
"So, it's a deal, then?"  
  
 _Say yes. I want to tell you. I want to show you. Darling. I have been this shell since I came here. To see you again is madness._  
  
"No! No, no, no, no. No deals!"  
  
 _Patience, then. I can wait. I have waited all this time for you to come home to me. Please, dearest._  
  
"Hm. Fair enough!"

**Author's Note:**

> Why is Alastor not a word? I know people in real life named Alastor. It's a normal name?
> 
> P.S. This relationship as-is isn't super healthy and tbh Charlie/Vaggie is both adorable and very good wlw representation. I just like the dynamic between Charlie and Al.


End file.
